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TimBeaudet's Trophies

TimBeaudet's Archive

During the ramp up of the LudumDare weekend I didn’t actually pay much attention to the themes I was voting on, or which was popular or not. I didn’t even take the top 20 list and try thinking of different ideas like I’ve done in the past. One Room was announced as the theme and immediately I was at a loss. Like normal everybody in irc complaining about the theme, so I just left that alone for the time.

Over the last year I’ve been playing more and more tabletop / boardgames and I guess the ‘success’ of my LD36 entry, Ancient Robots lured me into doing another tabletop like game. I mashed together the mechanics of Dungeon Roll with the theme of The Big Book of Madness which is our current favorite. How hard could it be, roll some dice to get things that can attack, have enemy types that match the dice to BE attacked, and some form of scoring.

Not quite that simple

The following morning I got onto making a SpellBook to define and contain the different effects, Fire, Water, Earth and Mind were the types I choose. The spellbook would randomize the contents at game start, and allow a spell to be clicked on/be used. Then created the HauntedRoom object which held all the baddies, skeleton, slimy ooze and goblins, each weak to a certain magic school and all weak to mind attacks. I couldn’t really put my finger on it, but this process took much longer than I expected it to.

It also lacked feedback, it was now Sunday morning sometime like 12 hours remaining, and the enemies just popped off screen. I couldn’t worry about that since I had to make a results, win/lose, screen and let the game restart and all. Still I was worried about the lack of feedback. With a few hours left I finally thought of a way to add some that wasn’t terribly time consuming and it actually went faster than expected – if only I had thought of it earlier.

The feedback still wasn’t great, and it remains a bit difficult to understand what is happening. The most common complaint was not figure out what spells attacked which enemies the best. I thought color coding would help, green earth for instance will kill ALL green skeletons or 1 of any other type, same with the others (mind kills all of 1 type). However after watching a play-through, I found that the first few “hours” spent in the room really don’t show this very well since there are only 1-3 enemies and randomly chosen so there is no feedback/exploration of the spells until at least day 3 or 4 where the game is about over.

Also the only way to win is to leave the room by choice, something a lot of people seemed to miss, but again that is from my lack of feedback to them.

Wrapping it up:

I think the theme of the game really resonated with me, being a magic student and being dared to enter and remain in the schools haunted room, a room teachers have placed off limits to all students, and attempting to stay in as long as possible while still coming out alive. Threats increasing with each hour passed.

*I really could use some extra ratings as I’m not such a cool kid this time around, I’ve been afk since the event doing some car work that is still incomplete. I’d really like to be ranked so if you could spare a few minutes I’d appreciate it!

Obligatory I‘m in post. Will be using my C++, OpenGL gamedev framework TurtleBrains and have yet to decide solo compo or team jam. Leaning more towards compo at this point. Other tools include whiteboards, books, game controllers, oh- software: VisualStudio/Xcode/Codelite/Sublime Text in some weird magical cauldron. Probably InkScape maybe slight use of Paint.NET or Gimp. Likely Audacity and sfxr/bfxr for sound. Music is always in the air for me, unfortunately.

I’m getting prepared for another fun event and am looking for a 2D artist to join myself (programmer) and mmango (audio) in a collaboration effort for the LudumDare 33 Jam. I’ve worked in the game industry for 5 years and have been around LudumDare since 2009. The

As the artist you determine and make the visual style of the game happen. We plan to design the mechanics of the game together after theme announcement, but with the short time frame available, the scope shall remain small.

For technology we will be using TurtleBrains, a C++ framework that runs on Windows and Mac that I’ve been working on for over a year.

For the 32nd LudumDare I have upgraded the battle stations, a new office chair for those long sessions at the keyboard should help keep energy high and focused on the game. Also a new improvement to the ol’ PC, a mechanical keyboard. Something I’ve been hoping to upgrade to for a very long time. Now I get to FEEL the keys being pressed, and my neighbor will hear me typing*.

My girlfriend has decided to attempt to help me again this LudumDare, so we will jump into the JAM side of things and Dizzy will do the art. If it comes out anything like our LD27 entry, Feeding Time! then I know it will look good. We have learned from our mistakes and will not save level design to the very end, and more importantly will get feedback a few times through-out the weekend to figure out what is working and what is not.

I have not decided if this is a permanent change yet, but I have been playing with the idea of slightly dropping the BlackBird online persona and going with my name instead, will see how it goes.

I’ve also started streaming the development of the TurtleBrains framework. Streaming is still a very new concept to me, and I’ve yet to figure out how to make the stream interesting at all, but check it out if that is something your interested in. Streaming times will vary, essentially, whenever I am developing and in the mood to share the screen, maybe in the future I’ll add the Mic In, but not for now.

Ludum Dare 31 was an awesome event for me, the Precise Shot compo entry came out great! Not only did the game come out great, by running the RescueTime application, I was able to breakdown how much time went into development. The reports clearly show what went well and what could be done better for Ludum Dare 32 and beyond.

Sleeping was the single most time consuming activity: 15 hours 29 minutes.

Most comfortable with programming, and it shows taking more than 50% development time.

Future events I should aim to spread this time on content creation, arts and sounds.

Six hours of development efforts on the second day didn’t make it into the final game.

76 minutes spent on twitter, composing 41 tweets.

The final hour was spent on the art, sounds and counting effects for the results screen.

Check out the results in more detail below: (click the image to make it larger)

I do work at RescueTime but I know there will be people interested in the data above, and maybe some will be interested in using RescueTime to learn about their own productivity and habits. You can sign up for an account at: https://www.rescuetime.com/ or ask any questions you may have about it.

Not yet sure if I’ll use my Windows/Mac, C++, OpenGL framework: TurtleBrains or if I’ll go with AS3 and FlashPunk, but I do know I am in and ready for LudumDare 31. Hopefully this will be a bit better than my failed #LD30 attempt. Weekend is free from other plans, and ready to make a game!

Not my first 48hour LudumDare rodeo, but I have missed a couple recently. Not this time. I’ve signing up to use the yet to be finished Turtle Brains framework, my high-quality C++ framework for real-time application and (slightly lacking [sound, sprites, animation] at the moment), 2D game development on Windows and Mac, and maybe someday, Linux.

So for tools I’ll be pretty much using:

C++ (Visual Studio, XCode)

Unfinished TurtleBrains Framework

Audacity, Recorder, SFXR (if I can get sounds working)

Inkscape, Paint.net, MS Paint, Blender (if I go 3D instead of 2D)

Probably a few tools that are not listed here, but I will be attempting to do LD30!

Note: TurtleBrains is available, as-is, if you want it just ask BlackBird on the LudumDare irc channel or email me and I’ll get you a link. I am not going to link it publicly just yet because the feature set is incomplete and the documentation is lacking a little. The current documentation can be found at: http://www.timbeaudet.com/turtle_brains/documentation/ which doesn’t have much for the “game development” side because, being honest, that is currently lacking… I wanted to have 2D sprite management and sounds by now, but only have a state machine, and basic keyboard/mouse input.

Well, it is time for LudumDare 23, and I am IN. I am also handicapped from my normal 3 monitor + TV for media. Down to 2 monitors and the TV for media, I think I will live but I am annoyed with the amount of real-estate lost. Mostly the left most monitor that is not existing would be used for the web-browser and thus documentation. This now has to share with the right monitor which is primarily the “chatting and socializing” monitor with double duty of file exploring on the HDD for assets and such. Center remains the environment for programming and debugging the application. The TV off to the side is mostly for media/movies/tv … I need to listen to noise while working.

Last weekend was Ludum Dare 22: Alone, obviously why else would hundreds of people gather to make no less than 891 games not including those that were not submitted? I took part of this awesome gathering for the second time, with Ludum Dare 21: Escape being the first. During that entry I had the following postmortem of which after reading I realize I didn’t put in all the things that went wrong. I feel to that list should have been “pick a smaller idea”, although I suppose that previous idea was very flexible in size.

What went right:

I had the weekend to myself, with no interruptions or responsibilities.

I picked a framework I was familiar with, and had tools to do what I needed.

I followed the theme well with a simple idea of taking a team sport, and playing alone vs the other team.

I spent little time debugging issues, crashing, etc.

I added sound effects and music early on.

What went wrong:

The idea was far too big for a weekend project, too many little rules.

The idea never turned into a game really, despite a win/lose condition; It was too hard, or too repetitive if the player managed to learn the patterns.

Some art; the player/ai characters, was completely temporary and never replaced with something better.

I spent far too much time programming. My framework needs to allow me to manage/do less, if it is to be useful in LD.

What was learned:

I need to spend more time on art/music and content. To help with this I am rewriting/adding to my framework so that it will manage more things for me. Instead of loading a sound, and remembering to unload it, I should just be able to PlaySound(“Yada.wav”). It would go a long way in reducing the time I spent programming, or at least the time spent programming “needless” things. An idea for a 48 hour game must be small. I went into this compo knowing I needed to aim to be complete with my game by the end of day 1, yet the idea I chose was far too big for that.

I am waiting for the next LD, where I hope I can shine through and get this done right.

So last night I jumped in feet first with a very broad sense of what I was going to do; I now need to know exactly how it will play, and the very minimum gameplay, win/lose/scoring conditions and prepare myself to complete the minimum by the end of today so I can take Sunday off. That said, I also just woke up, so I am a tad hungry. Design over breakfast sounds good to me.

I was able to get something looking fairly well, I feel, without much effort or time. However it does not have any gameplay yet besides a player that can move in 8 directions. Tomorrow morning I need to jump directly on the gameplay portion.

I am not sure postmortem is the proper term for this entry, being I can’t be sure the life of the project has come to an end. Perhaps it has. Regardless of the lifetime of the project, this post is about what happened, what went right and what went wrong, as I worked on my Ludum Dare 21 entry: Escape. Sorry, I made the “what happened” a little longer than I expected, skip to the bottom for a true post mortem.

Ludum Dare 21: Start – 1 month:

This weekend started at least a month before with preparation and cleaning my slate for the entire weekend. I made it clear to family and friends that I would be busy during the weekend. Under no exceptions, (perhaps a big pay bonus), was I going to go into work; regardless of the circumstances or consequences. Luckily work didn’t want me to come in, so I didn’t need to worry about consequences. I had my framework picked; homegrown DirectX 9 engine written in C++, my language of choice. I was set. The week leading up to Ludumdare I made a blank project from my template – in doing so I felt I’d automate this process; which took me the full week nights after work. However, I can now type “CreateProject ProjectName” and out comes an already compiled template project that is at blank screen and ready for development.

Ludum Dare 21: Start – 5 hours:

No lie, there were several ideas floating around my head and was hoping for Castles to be the theme. I went shopping for some food and supplies for the weekend so I didn’t need to waste time doing so later. The IRC channel; #ludumdare was insane, I started a G+ hangout that filled with so many people, and I didn’t know them all, but we all shared a passion for Game Development. Finally, it was time.

Ludum Dare 21: 48hrs Remaining

Theme: Escape. Thoughts crossing my mind, #ludumdare going insane, I left the G+ hangout and went to my white board, and to cook a meal while I thought up ideas. I was pretty surprised that I had three right off the bat, each with their own challenges. One was a turnbased puzzler that would have been easy on the programming side, harder on the content side. Another I threw away based on scope, it was much too big for a weekend. The final was a physics based glider falling through a maze like puzzle to the ‘exit’. Despite being harder with math and level design, I choose the physics based glider on the basis that content would be kept to a minimum.

Ludum Dare 21: 44hrs Remaining

I had created a 2D camera, and sprite class – two things I overlooked on my framework, which admittedly is typically used for 3D projects. I managed to get the basics going before heading to bed to sleep on my idea before committing completely.

Ludum Dare 21: 36hrs Remaining

Woke up, ate a good meal and planned to work on the physics of the glider until I got it right, so that I could avoid wasting time on level design by setting the physics in stone before a level is started. The physics gave me some problems, it took awhile to figure out that the equation for lift did not apply it in the correct direction. That and other strange things. I spent far longer on the physics that I wanted, and I never got quite what I wanted out of it – but it was somewhat controllable.

Ludum Dare 21: 24hrs Remaining

I spent about 2 hours trying to get a randomized tunnel to generate, and quickly gave up on the basis I didn’t like the outcome of any of the work. So at this point the choice changed to making a quick and dirty level editor, which actually came out very well. By the time I went to bed I had wrapped up a level editor that I could play, edit, play, edit in quick succession. Hung out on G+ hangouts as much as possible, had some good discussions while still getting stuff done.

Ludum Dare 21: 13hrs Remaining

Motivation has dropped quite a bit even though I was on the final stretch. Time pressure was starting to begin as I realized I didn’t have a level or anything – but I did have my main gameplay mechanic; physics. To accurately test the level I was about to develop, I needed to add the collision for the game – which was much more difficult than it seemed. Despite using code I had from another project for line-to-line collision, it did not work. In the end, debugging proved that I was putting in the wrong lines… Many hours wasted.

Ludum Dare 21: 6hrs Remaining

A final burst of energy to finish the level, add a score counter, title page and share it on #ludumdare – got some feedback, made a quick and dirty tutorial page – that added a lot to the look and feel of the game. Removed the level editor and temp map files for the final build. Tried making some music for the game, but failed miserably.

Ludum Dare 21: 0hrs Remaining

Submitted the project as a jam on the basis I did not share my code. However, I followed every other rule strictly.

Ludum Dare 21:Postmortem; What went wrong

This was the buggiest project I’ve worked on in years, I had to cross hurdle after hurdle; physics, line collision, level design.

I did not put enough effort into created the game music, or sound effects – and this would have paid off huge in the end.

My own expectations were let down on basis of; physical feeling and level design.

Although I took a good share of breaks, getting out of the apartment would have been useful.

Ludum Dare 21: Postmortem; What went right

The visual quality stunned me, it actually came out looking decent.

I made good use of breaks for food, shower, sleep, and thinking.

I finished, it was close to complete, and I had a lot of fun.

Check out the project, rate it, leave comments and most of all – hopefully it is enjoyable, even for a few moments.